26 December 2007

---it's name relates to boxes of food or other gifts or the contents of the church's poor box, depending on who you ask----it's also the feast of st. stephen, when good king wencelas was doing his thing---and, of course, it's a big day for american shoppers----even if we are not out giving gifts to our servants, at least we aren't stoning people---

22 November 2007

another run on peachtree this morning---the track club's marathon and half marathon are today, but i didn't think that began until 11:30----anyway, a lot of people out running in a chilly (63) rain---mostly quiet, except for some cow bells now and then, and the horde of marines running in lockstep and chanting as they went---

12 November 2007

the exterior is nearing completion and they are installing landscaping on the terraces, which are on the 10th floor or so and apparently on both sides of the tower---the trees on our terrace are dying from lack of water---meanwhile aqua is offering to pay two years of association fees for each new purchase----

11 November 2007

10 November 2007

the g-great granddaughter of s. r. young the first stumbled across my post on her grandfather's death in august, two days before we closed on the purchase----she said he built the fish pond when he was a teenager, or before 1935---and she told me that her brother drowned the day after we closed---she was googling his name when she came across my post---a lot of loose ends to finish up, but they refinished the floors upstairs this week---the two apartments up there are looking very good----

04 November 2007

i stumbled across an old post from somebody with the east point historical society who has been helping maintain the old lee family cemetery on washington road in east point---my g-g-grandpa john lee moved to what is now the west side of east point in the 1840s---one of my favorite pictures from that side of the family is this one, taken about 1925, showing ipson and tommie lee, my g-grandparents, in front of their house on washington rd., which was torn down about 1970---in the background is john lee's old antebellum house, which was torn down before world war II---the photo was taken not long before they sold the place and moved into town---ipson hated leaving the farm and killed himself a few years later---

so aqua is finished, but they still haven't sold all the units---only a few people have moved in----kinda sad that, since w. peachtree is one-way northbound, the only people who really see the building's facade are the perverts waiting to get out of the parking lot at the dirty book store-----meanwhile 1010 is moving right along and viewpoint has been topped out---

19 October 2007

no rain to speak of here, but maybe the mussells in florida got watered---a foot of rain or something in the panhandle---the sunset is starting to emerge from behind the plaza as it slowly moves to the south----

18 October 2007

Anti-"socialized medicine" fanatics can quibble, (as they've done with the Wilkersons and the Frosts), over who can and who can't afford private health insurance, but it doesn't matter whether my family earns $40,000 or $120,000 per year. It doesn't matter whether comprehensive health insurance would cost us $7,500 or $12,000per year. It doesn't matter whether we need file a claim for $1 or $1,000,000. It doesn't matter because health care has already been socialized - privatelysocialized - by people who are pushing the costs higher and higher, at the expense of hardworking Americans who don't think our salaries should be drastically reduced by these exorbitant costs while the insurance industry continues to post ever-larger profits.

broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime― mark twain

truly, what of good

ever have prophets brought to men?

craft of many words,

only through

evil your message speaks.

seers bring aye

terror, so to keep

men afraid.

―

aeschylus

he cannot be a gentleman which loveth not a dog.

john northbrooke, c. 1570

Each of us is all the sums he has not counted: subtract us into nakedness and night again, and you shall see begin in Crete four thousand years ago the love that ended yesterday in Texas.

The seed of our destruction will blossom in the desert, the alexin of our cure grows by a mountain rock, and our lives are haunted by a Georgia slattern, because a London cutpurse went unhung. Each moment is the fruit of forty thousand years. The minute-winning days, like flies, buzz home to death, and every moment is a window on all time.

I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it.

john stuart mill in a letter to conservative mp sir john pakington (march 1866)